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Questions and Answers - Part 3

  
  

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Char Aina
05:20 / 24.08.06
oh, i have the leather and the chains, grant.
i just need the style, and maybe this time a model who doesnt have such a weak stomach and immune system.

but seriously.
its for a band's stuff, and they have expressed desire for me to aid them in making video nasty style posters.
 
 
Char Aina
05:22 / 24.08.06
jackie;
i think you just load the song in and then chop off the bit you need using cut and paste, dont you?
 
 
electric monk
14:28 / 24.08.06
toksik - I know shit about Fireworks, but perhaps I could talk you through tweaking your imagery in some general terms? Would that help? I'd be relying on my Photoshop knowledge, but maybe we could work it out.
 
 
grant
15:50 / 24.08.06
Jackie -- I could easily do this for you if you don't want to figure it out yourself. However, with Soundforge it's *really easy*.

(Depending on the flavor of Soundforge and the flavor of sound file -- if the song's an mp3, you'll have to convert to wav for the older, less-pro versions of Soundforge.)

Basically, just open the file in Soundforge, pick the point you want to end at, highlight the rest and delete it.

Next, if you want to be fancy, highlight the new final two or three seconds, go to the "effects" menu or whatever (might be "tools" -- been years since I used SF) and click "Fade Out". This'll avoid ugly pops or clunks.

Hmm. If you're left with silence at the end of the track I think you either: * drag the "end of file" marker to the new end,
* highlight the silence and Del or Cntrl-X, or else
* highlight the "song" part of the waveform, Cntrl-X, New file, Cntrl-V. Save.

Again, if you're using an older/non-pro version of SF, this is all done with a .wav file, so you'll probably need something that can save the end result as an .mp3 (if that's what you want to wind up playing, which you probably do).
 
 
petunia
14:31 / 26.08.06
Is 'Amorophobic' a word?

If it isn't, please may I coin it?
 
 
Olulabelle
16:33 / 26.08.06
Toxic, I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you asking which software you should use to create an image similar to the one you've posted, or are you asking for style tips, or a poster making tutorial or, well, what?
 
 
Mourne Kransky
18:32 / 26.08.06
Didnm't know about the beta blockers affecting your cholesterol levels, Boboss. How shit am I? I'm amazed that one dose would make a difference. They certainly would change the blood glucose picture but that would take more than one dose.

Ganesh is like you with the needle thing. Faints at the sight of a needle advancing towards him. Has no problem at all when he's on the other end of it though.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:55 / 26.08.06
It's hardly a quick fix, but my kid sister's currently undergoing a course of therapy-style stuff to try and sort out her injection/fainting issues. As recommended by her GP. Goes in for weekly sessions, has to handle a medical needle once a day, has been given a video of people being injected that she's got to watch every now and again...

No idea if doing something similar is anything you've already considered, Boboss. All depends on how much of a problem it's causing you, I guess.
 
 
Bed Head
22:08 / 26.08.06
Hrmm. Those corner things, the little sticky-backed *corners* that you can buy and stick into a photo album or a scrapbook so it can hold photos of all different sizes and shapes; I’m sure they really exist, I don’t think I’ve just imagined such a thing...

...so where would I buy them? What sort of shop sells a thing like that? What are they called? They do really exist, don’t they? etc etc. Only I’m sitting here thinking I’ll probably have to go into random shops asking for ‘corner things’ and maybe get assistants looking at me like I’m One Of Those People who invents things to ask for, and I don’t really want to be looked at like that right now.
 
 
Olulabelle
22:36 / 26.08.06
Bed, they do exist. Go to WH Smith's and ask for photo corners.

****

How does Tommy Cooper do the 'Bottle-glass-glass-bottle' trick? How? Where do the bottles come from? I've wanted to know the answer to this since I was six.
 
 
Bed Head
23:17 / 26.08.06
You’re ace. Thank you!

(And of course they’re called something blindingly obvious and totally googleable like ‘photo corners’. Of course they are. Gah. Total mental block.)
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
15:07 / 27.08.06
Okay, I need examples of books, films, music, philosophical positions, religions or critical approaches that 'assert the need for compassion, play and kindness over abstract concepts of good and evil'. Right now all I can think of is The Beatles' 'Strawberry fields forever' ('nothing is real/nothing to get hung about'), but I'm sure there's tonnes more that my caffeinated robot brain can't think of right now.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
15:15 / 27.08.06
Postmodernism is more about play than it is about grand concepts of good and evil.
 
 
petunia
15:36 / 27.08.06
Neitzsche said

That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil

In Beyond Good and Evil. His whole philosophical approach is highly critical of the division of the world into a Good/Evil polarity and he sees the universe as essentially ludic.

Rumi Said

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Along with many other beautiful lines on a similar theme.

Zen, Sufism and Taoism all emphasise the importance of transcending ideas of right and wrong. The writings of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu may be worth a flick-through for more material.

A lot of the Beatles' lyrics are highly quotable for such a topic. My favourite is usually 'Tomorrow never knows'...

I get the feeling that Walt Whitman is into similar ludic amorality, but I'm not particularly familiar with his work.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
15:43 / 27.08.06
Actually, and this could be related to postmodernism too, I would suggest that some Vertigo comic books of the late 80s-early 90s are about compassion, play, the ludic (dressing up, crossing boundaries, blurring identities) becoming more important than good and evil. Doom Patrol (Danny-the-Street for instance), Shade The Changing Man (and Shadella the Changing Woman). Probably also Flex Mentallo.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
16:34 / 27.08.06
Thanks guys. Postmodernism was my first idea too- since this is all in aid of a dissertation on PoMo themes in Philip K Dick's final trilogy- VALIS, Transmigration of Timothy Archer and The Divine Invasion.
The question above is related to the different world-views of the three God-like characters in The Divine Invasion. To those of you who have read The Divine Invasion tell me if this particular reading makes sense to you (it's cut and pasted directly from the essay):

"Yahweh (Emmanuel) sees the world as a simulacra created by an evil deity which will be destroyed when humanity is ‘woken’ from the slumber imposed on it by the intervention of a higher power- compare this to Judeo-Christian-Islamic teleology in religion, Marxism in politics (where the 'higher power' is the workers' collective struggle), the Enlightenment project in philosophy (the higher power being objective reality) and, though I loathe to mention it even in passing, the Matrix trilogy in film. Belial’s view is roughly similar, since there is held to be something fundamentally wrong with existence, but redemption and escape are impossible: compare to the philosophical pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer, the novels of Michael Houllebecq and H.P Lovecraft, the films of Todd Solondz. Finally, Zina’s view rejects both assumptions and instead asserts the need for compassion, play and kindness over abstract concepts of good and evil: see the Beatles’ Stawberry Fields Forever and Tommorow Never Knows, Postmodern philosophy and the writings of Neitzche, Rumi, Lao-Tzu and Walt Whitman."
(Couldn't James Joyce be added to this list? 'History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awaken' and all that)

1) To those of you who have read The Divine Invasion: Am I oversimplifying/misinterpreting these characters or missing anything?
2) To those of you that haven't: Do all of the references I've put into the three categories belong there? If not can you suggest any others that might fit better.

(BTW, this essay will be finished fairly soon, so if any of you, particularly those of you with a background or interest in lit crit and PKD, would like to help proof-read it and suggest improvements, being aware that my Uni' like all Unis has a strict no-collusion policy so you can't make much more than suggestions, then drop me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send it as a Word '03 document)
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
08:33 / 28.08.06
Working on some writing, and I need a car with a distinctive engine sound, one you can recognize from a block away and say "ah, that right there is a Dodge Challenger" or whatever. Ideally, a car that most casual car-lovers will recognize, not something that you have to really be an expert to listen to and know.
Super ideally, the sort of car that people put flame decals on. I really know nothing at all about cars, but if somebody could give me a few suggestions that would be excellent.
What "classic" cars have a very distinctive engine sound?
 
 
Spaniel
08:49 / 28.08.06
Well, apparently Harley Davidsons have a distinctive sound. Probably not what you're looking for tho'.
 
 
feline
11:17 / 28.08.06
my car makes the most distinctive engine sound...
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
11:37 / 28.08.06
I was thinking that the character could drive a Harley, but he also carries a lot of gear around. And the other car looks too... nice. He's a bad man. I could just make the car distinctive-sounding, but I'd rather find a "real" distinctive-sounding car if possible.
 
 
grant
14:25 / 28.08.06
Custom muffler. Those things are designed to sound distinctive.
 
 
spectre
15:53 / 28.08.06
You could always make him drive a diesel vehicle of some sort - that sound is pretty distinctive
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
18:06 / 28.08.06
Grant, your suggestion has led me to the eerie world of custom muffler builds, including Borla, and from there to the amazing idea of muffler ringtones. Some day I will have a phone that sounds like a "V8 Mustang with MagnaFlow" when my friends call, and on that day, sir, I will be in your debt.
 
 
unheimlich manoeuvre
22:40 / 28.08.06
Olulabelle - How does Tommy Cooper do the 'Bottle-glass-glass-bottle' trick? How? Where do the bottles come from? I've wanted to know the answer to this since I was six.

Assuming I didn't miss someone answering this.
Kind of ruins the sense of wonder.
But... if you REALLY want to know.

Multiplying Bottles.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
18:20 / 31.08.06
I'm interested in getting some prints for my walls. In fact, this is of prime importance as so far the house has been festooned with a small plane made of beer cans.

Do any of you know anywhere I could get a nicely printed version of Bosch's The garden of Earthly Delights or any of Blake's illuminated pages?
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
18:42 / 31.08.06
I got some Blake prints last year when I was visiting London, at the Royal Albert, IIRC. Not his illuminated stuff, though.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
18:44 / 31.08.06
Legba, are you able to pay online? If so, I found this place after a quick search for The Garden of Delights. Also, the National Gallery in London has a Blake collection and you can order custom prints from their website.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
18:46 / 31.08.06
I'd trust PW's word over mine. Especially since I screwed up the name of the museum/gallery... Victoria and Albert, right?
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
18:56 / 31.08.06
Right; or you can call it by the shorthand version "the V&A". I just looked at their website shop, but couldn't find any prints for sale online. Might be my web-fu though. Also, Legba The Tate and many other galleries offer prints from their collections. i.e. maybe find where an artwork is being exhibited and see if they (at the very least) do custom prints? I didn't know one could do this and now I'm even more gutted that I haven't got a bank account..boo-hoo...
 
 
All Acting Regiment
19:37 / 01.09.06
Cheers, guys, that's exactly what I was after!
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
01:07 / 03.09.06
Now worries, Legba. Glad to help. Now I need yours Barbelith:

Is there a decent really decent "text to voice" reader type program out there I can maybe download or something? One I can choose different voices for different paragraphs (etc) and maybe control formatting parameters a bit?

Due to a project a friend showed me recently, I've been experimenting with the speech function on my text program and that of my browser, seeing what it's like to hear you all with emotionless voices, and to try to strip away those emotions I can't help but project onto you at times. i.e. a bit like voluntary tonal agnosia, or something.

However, unfortunately, Barbelith's HTML formatting and both the programs I own seem to collide and speech gets slurred easily, and it has to read out the date and time of everyone's post, not just their name (etc), so I have to do loads of editing to make it even half-work. Which makes it kind of less appealing than it could be.

So, any technology out there that I could be using instead?
 
 
Dead Megatron
20:47 / 04.09.06
How do I make a link directly to a post, btw? are there instruction somewhere so obvious I should be ashamed not to see by myself?
 
 
miss wonderstarr
21:00 / 04.09.06
If you right-click on the date and time at the left of your post, you get a precise address that you should then be able to insert into a link. I think I had to be told this, myself.
 
 
Dead Megatron
21:21 / 04.09.06
Thanks a lot. As always, it seems so painfully obvious once someone tells you.
 
 
Tabitha Tickletooth
15:14 / 05.09.06
I love this thread! New question: my mate is buying a laptop. He lives in London and has got a pretty good idea of what he wants, how much he wants to pay, etc. Thing is, there seems to be a real absence of PC retailers! We went to PC World and the level of customer service was so poor that it just wasn't possible to make a purchase from them - and I mean practically as well as ethically. Having experienced similar shoddy treatment from Dixons/Currys, we won't be trading with them, either.

So, where would you go to buy a laptop in London? Not averse necessarily to the idea of online purchase, but this is quite a 'big buy' for him so it would need to be a reputable and trustworthy company. The vendor needs to have reasonable prices and be pleasant to deal with. Help us Barbelith, you're our only hope.
 
  

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